Detective Frank Drebin

Frank Drebin (full title Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad) is a fictional character in the Police Squad! series and the Naked Gun movies played by Leslie Nielsen.

Character overview

Frank Drebin.

Frank Drebin is a member of Police Squad, a special department of the police force, where he served for many years. He is known for being a bumbling fool, causing lots of problems and trouble for those around them, but being entirely oblivious to it all. He works alongside police Captain Ed Hocken (Alan North/George Kennedy) and Nordberg (Peter Lupus/O.J. Simpson) and the trio generally work as a team. He and Ted Olson (Scientist) are the only characters that appeared in both Police Squad! and The Naked Gun films and were portrayed by the same actor

Relationships

In "A Substantial Gift", the first episode of the short-lived 1982 "Police Squad!" television series, it is suggested that Frank might have had a homosexual relationship as a younger man. After a grieving widow asked him if he knew "what it’s like to be married to a wonderful man for fourteen years", Frank comments,

"No, I can’t say that I do. I did live with a guy once, though that was just for a couple of years. Usual slurs, rumors, innuendos; people didn’t understand. Ran him out of town like a common pygmy. Sure, he was a physical education major, but he had a mind, he could think. He wasn’t all muscle, all BODY, all sinewy limbs. He got married ya know later, had three kids. I never cared for her. Sent a nice gift, never got a note. I told him she was wrong. And that younger boy, just like his father: Football hero. Lived with him for a year, it wasn’t the same. Can’t go back."'

In The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, Frank reveals that he often goes by his maiden name, which suggests he was married to someone with the surname of Drebin at one point in his life and chose to take it (although Drebin's incredibly loose grasp of reality may have had something to do with it).

Throughout the Naked Gun movies, Frank had an on/off relationship with Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), a woman he originally met when she was the receptionist of Vincent Ludwig. In the first movie they meet and develop some kind of relationship, ending in a proposal of marriage. Jane accepts, but stands him up at the altar and leaves for Washington, D.C., because she felt that he didn't understand her passion for the environment. He then comes across her again in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear when she was working at the Meinheimer Research Institute and a bomb was set off in the building. They eventually get back together despite a hinted-at relationship between Jane and Quentin Hapsburg (Robert Goulet), the villain and main antagonist in the movie and once again get engaged at the end of the movie. Then in Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult the couple is now married and trying repeatedly to have a baby. Frank is retired but Ed and Nordberg lure him back into work, much to the anger of Jane, who thought if Frank worked, he would always be neglecting her. The couple eventually get back together and have a baby shortly thereafter, Jane recognising that Frank's work is who he is. Having entered the wrong delivery room, after seeing an African American baby, Frank chases off Nordberg (played by O.J. Simpson), believing it was his doing, despite the fact that Jane had, by that time, delivered their baby in another operation room.

Trivia

Frank's full title, Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad, is not a real position but rather a merge of three official titles (Detective, Sergeant, and Lieutenant).

Frank is Dutch-Irish, as stated in the first movie but his father was from Wales.

Drebin and Hocken (Kennedy) made an appearance at WWF's SummerSlam (1994) PPV. In this guise, they were looking for The Undertaker, who in storylines had previously vanished

Drebin's famous look (pictured) was later done again by Leslie Nielsen in Scary Movie 4 as President Harris.